1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to filtering e-mail, and more particularly relates to allowing a user to more safely inspect and accept filtered e-mail.
2. Description of the Related Art
E-mail filtering systems are a critical component of the business world today. Some filtering systems, called spam filters, try to weed out unsolicited and undesirable e-mail that clogs the user's inbox and reduces productivity. Other filters may try to block e-mails with offensive text or pictures, e-mails with imbedded scripts or executable code, and other types of content that present a security or work environment risk. While the current e-mail filtering technology can be quite sophisticated, it still suffers from a number of drawbacks.
The most important drawback of the current e-mail filtering technology is that all filtered e-mails are treated the same, and as a practical matter are typically made unavailable to the user. Some useful e-mails may be incorrectly filtered, and the unavailability of good e-mails trapped by the filters is an important enough problem that email service providers are considering a pay-per-email system that allows legitimate e-mailers to pay their way through the filtering system to ensure that legitimate e-mails get delivered. Once an e-mail is filtered in the current technology, the user may be able to find and accept that e-mail only by accessing a junk e-mail location and sorting through potentially thousands of e-mails filled with offensive and/or risky content.
A second drawback of the current e-mail filtering technology is that e-mail is accepted or rejected on a pass-fail basis only. Thus, the user has no control over the treatment of potentially useful e-mails, and an e-mail which narrowly meets filtering criteria is treated no differently than an e-mail which is obviously spam. Further, the user has no safe reviewing method for filtered e-mails, where they can peek at relatively safe content or portions of the content before deciding whether to accept or reject the e-mail.
From the foregoing discussion, it should be apparent that a need exists for an apparatus and method that allows a more nuanced filtering method than a simple pass/fail check to block an e-mail. Beneficially, such an apparatus and method would allow the user to safely review blocked or partially blocked e-mail such that good e-mails are not filtered improperly and thereby made unavailable the user.